Several years ago, I had one of those "somebody should invent this" ideas:  Incorporate GPS and digital messaging into Citizens Band radios, so that motorists could alert each other to common road hazards, like ice, floods, high winds and - I'm such a tease - speed traps; all with the touch of a button. Unfortunately, CB radios have limited range. For an ice hazard to remain constant through the night, motorists would have to rediscover and rebroadcast the alert, over and over again. That's no good. Eventually, somebody's gonna slide into your Aunt Gertrude's living room. There goes your inheritance, a swell thimbel collection, featuring the complete "Famous Monsters" series from Franklin Mint. Same thing with speed traps. Either way, Gertie's gonna get nailed.

Enter Trapster (trapster.com). This free service is sorta like my idea, only without all the dorky 1970s horse crap. It has a bunch of other cool stuff too; stuff I never even thought of. God damn it; I'm an idiot.

Trapster is brilliantly simple: when you witness a speed trap, you press a button on your GPS-enabled cell phone. The cell phone communicates your exact location to Trapster's Internet website which, in turn, stores and forwards the alert to other cell phones in the same geographic location. What's more, Trapster plants a virtual "buoy" at the location and continues these alerts for 30 minutes or more, depending on the type of threat you reported.  Groovy!

Trapster is one of the new "social networking" applications, like the wildly popular Wikipedia.  As such, it is open to the public and is only as reliable as the people who use it.  But that's not a bad thing, given the number of drivers who claim to resent speed traps - most do.  So, what's to prevent a police officer or a speed-limit zealot from sabotaging Trapster with bogus data?  Not much, but without validation from the community, they're unlikely to make a dent.  Over time, legitimate traps and members earn trust, or "confidence" from fellow members.  Users can opt to filter alerts by confidence, leaving any false alarms in the proverbial dust.  Not to get all anarchistic or anything, but Trapster demonstrates a perfect application of social networking - harnessing the passion of a population misrepresented (and punished) by its "representative" government.  "Booya!  Let's revolution up in this bitch!"  Sorry.  It just sorta slipped out.

I've beta-tested and road-tested Trapster for nearly a year now and over a few thousand miles of pavement.  Technically, it works.  What's missing?  Critical mass. For Trapster to alert you to a live speed trap, somebody between you and said trap must identify and report it before you're in range.  Assuming a rural highway with limited congestion (one vehicle per 500 feet of highway) and an average speed of 60 MPH, only 600 vehicles will pass the speed trap (both directions) in thirty minutes.  With a population of 300 million in the USA, a very rough estimation of critical mass comes at around 500,000 active, on-the-road (e.g., truckers, cab drivers) Trapster users.  More realistically, your trap will pop up less than five miles away.  [The rest will be gone or will have pulled somebody else over by the time you get there.]  Here, traffic volume is your friend (right up until it impedes your progress).  Assuming a five-mile distance to the trap and a populated area (1 vehicle per 100 feet distributed across eight lanes of beltway), we arrive at an estimated critical mass of 600,000 active Trapster users.  Of course, this is wildly speculative, but it helps to put things in perspective.  It's safe to conclude that Trapster will become reliable (and perhaps, sentient) when it can boast several million members in the United States alone.  At its current rate of growth, this is perhaps only a year or two away.

In the meantime, Trapster recognizes this shortcoming and answers with a worthwhile half-step solution:  In addition to live speed traps, members can report fixed-location alerts for speed cameras, red-light cameras and common speed trap locations.  Trapster even permits unfettered downloading of its accumulated data into any GPS device that supports an editable Point-of-Interest (POI) database.  I tested this feature with Garmin's Nuvi and a GPS-equipped Uniden BCT15 police radio scanner.  Now, both chirp happily (each in different cars, mind you) when approaching a fixed-position hazard.  Pretty cool.  Of course, if you require an audible reminder to stop at red lights, then you should probably pull to the side of the road right now and set fire to your cell phone.  And your driver's license.

Predictably, Trapster's free-love approach to data security has enabled some cheap knock-offs and newfangled speed trap "detectors" seen in the back pages of magazines.  Goddamn opportunists.  I'm surprised Bill Gates hasn't jumped on this one yet, with "Microsoft Trap."  This market confusion doesn't help Trapster's adoption rate any, but what else can Trapster do?  Secure the community-generated data?  Charge membership fees?  Say g'bye to critical mass.  Clearly, Trapster got it right.

Trapster is a young app, and improving daily.  Without being too critical - I'm a huge fan - here's a few features I'm holding my breath for:

• Trapster doesn't yet allow for road hazard alerts, such as dangerous curves, accidents or ice.  These could easily be added and might just legitimize Trapster for a much broader audience.
  
• Trapster doesn't jive well with roving police cruisers, being that Trapster's alerts are fixed to a single location.  Should you report a "live police" cruiser passing in the opposite direction?  Will it hurt your Trapster reputation when others refute the alert?
• Trapster doesn't aggregate alerts.  To gain a sense of "threat level" you must closely monitor and keep mental count of individual alerts.  This is tedious and can distract from your driving.
  

Fortunately, these last two shortcomings can be addressed through server-side data mining.  I know from conversations with Trapster's founder, Pete Tenereillo, that the service already keeps a historical record of "live police" alerts.  Imagine that Trapster factored in the time, date, proximity, confidence and volume of all current and historical alerts in your area.  From this, Trapster could automatically deliver a cumulative threat level.  For example, a high-confidence "common hiding place" might trigger "DEFCON 4" by itself or "DEFCON 3" towards the end of the month (when police are known by Trapster to increase activity).  Throw in a "live police" alert and Trapster could deliver a "DEFCON 1" alarm and perhaps a shock to your nipples (with optional hardware).  Furthermore, by correlating "moving police" alerts together, Trapster could identify dangerous "routes."  When "live police" are reported on the route, the alert level for the entire route would increase.  Put this all together and the problem of critical mass is greatly reduced.  Far fewer "live police" alerts are required to determine what's likely to be happening in your area.

If you're a police officer reading this, you're probably soiling your Kevlar shorts right about now.  What better way to beat an oppressive Big Brother than with a Bigger Brother?  He - that is, Trapster, er, society - will monitor your every move and report your activities to the world.  The only way to undermine an intelligent system like this is to abandon repetition - to abandon speed traps.  This takes officers out of their favorite hiding places and puts them back in traffic, where they belong, exercising their God-given faculties and citing drivers for bad driving.  Suck it up, pinheads!  Looks like you'll have to earn your paycheck, after all, just like the rest of us.

If you're as excited by Trapster as I am, then it behooves you to promote it.  Until we reach critical mass, the love you put into Trapster isn't likely to come back when you need it.  You know... at that shaded underpass.  Here's what you can do:

• Purchase a Trapster T-shirt from the website and talk it up when people ask.  I've had people hug me for sharing this with them.
  
• Pitch Trapster at your next car club event.
  
• Take an ad out in your local newspaper.
• Hug a trucker.  Perhaps the quickest way to saturate our highways with active Trapster users is through commercial drivers.
  

When this goes viral in the commercial driving community - after all, they stand to benefit from this more than any of us - then we might just see a return to the glory days of CB radio.  Only better.  Much better.

"Breaker One Nine.  Trapster kicks ass.  Pass it on.  Over."